It took some searching but I found some seriously interesting stuff! The answer is Yes, a student has gone directly from middle school to college. ONE of those students is Joe Bates. Joe Bates was so talented at the age of 12 that he completely skipped highschool! Joe Bates was 12 years old in 1968 when he attended a summer computer science program at Hopkins. An instructor in the program, Doris Lidtke, noticed he was doing a lot better than well--he was amusing himself by teaching the FORTRAN programming language to some graduate students. Lidtke called Stanley and said, in effect, "We've got to do something with this kid." As a psychology professor at Johns Hopkins University, Stanley was then a stats-and measurement man, so he had Bates take the Scholastic Achievement Test familiar to high school students. The kid scored so high that Stanley began looking for a high school that would let Bates take upper-level math and science courses. When no school responded affirmatively, Stanley took a real leap: He convinced Bates's parents to let their son enroll at Hopkins. Joe was 13 when he started college. By age 17 he had completed his master's degree in computer science. read the full article on bates here: http://www.jhu.edu/~jhumag/0400web/16.html Here you can find "America's most talented kids" All of the kids listed entered collge between ages 9 and 16. http://www.extremeintellect.com/02aKIDSINCOLLEGE/kidsincollege.htm One last amazing kid from South Korea: Song Yoo-geun is an 8 year old physics genius. SEOUL, March. 14 (Yonhap) -- Spring always comes with a new start, be it a new semester, new friends or new school supplies. Song Yoo-geun, an eight-year old physics genius, is also taking a new step this year, but unlike kids his own age, he is starting the new school year as a freshman at college. The prodigy also made headlines earlier last year when he obtained the legal Information Professor's certificate, normally attained by students in their 20s and 30s with aspirations in the data processing industry. "I like Quantum Physics... it's my favorite subject, but I also like the Harry Potter series... I've read all of them," said Song.

Doogie Howser MD anyone?

In my freshman college math class, I had one of those geniuses in my class. (He was in 8th grade if I recall correctly. He continued in 8th grade while taking the college courses. Then skipped 9-12th grade and went to college full time.) After the first exam, he went to a senior math class. By the second semester he was in graduate math classes. By the time I graduated 4 years later, he had a batchelors, masters, and was working on his PhD. There were clearly some social issues he suffered from but he seemed to work through them and became a well adjusted, brilliant adult. Last I heard (years ago), he was a college professor.

If you look on that same site, you'll find that another student (Lauren Betancourt) finished 8th grade and then went directly to college. She graduated with her BS in 2003. http://www.extremeintellect.com/ei2007/kidsincollege/laurencbetancourt.html